[Krom]

Deme or gamodeme (local breeding population) describes a ''panmictic unit'' (Wright, 1931) or "breeding community" (Gilmour & Gregor, 1939), so yes, it says nothing directly about genetic variation/differentiation. However its widely known no two demes have identical gene-pools. As Dobzhansky pointed out - two adjacent villages with demes will even differ in their genetic frequency. So I don't see the problem with just attaching trivial or minor genetic (or phenotypic) inter-population variation to demes in terms of what is known about human biological variation. Now the simple fact is there are no human races because genetic differentiation in demes or groups of demes (meta-populations) is rather negligible. It nearly falls at Wright's "miniscule" criteria for Fst values.

Interestingly if you read this paper, the authors complain that deme should not be a word on its own (because its an add-on, such as phenodeme, topodeme, ecodeme and others). However it was most widely used to mean gamodeme and has stuck as a local breeding population/panmictic unit.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...2350.x/pdf

This is a semantics issue though that doesn't bother me.

[Krom]

Ignoring this dispute about differentiation, and lets say "racial variation" is any measure (Dobzhansky, 1946) even trivial amounts. The problem you now have is your large divisions of populations (e.g. "Europeans"), are not actual meta-populations but arbitrary spatial populations. The problem with this is they aren't then useful. This is shown by the fact different anthropologists made different race classifications.

[Krom]

lOL. I would love to see who was on that "peer review" panel for your book/paper. I mean I've caught you out again distorting someone (this time Ehrhart).

A strange question given that you are posting in the very thread where the reviewing happened. Presumably are you talking about the pre-publication review.

Due to the political animosity, getting reviewers is difficult. This of course allows critics to claim that things were not reviewed properly afterwards. A silly argument based on self-censorship and political pressure.

It is the same tactic used with the Pioneer Fund. First make it impossible to obtain funding for important research due to political animosity, then after people get money from the PF, say research is unreliable because funded by 'racists'.

Fuerst wrote earlier who was approached for the role of reviewer:

http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...26#pid3226
http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...46#pid3246
http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...84#pid3284
http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...95#pid3295

But apparently very difficult to get anyone to review this. So John settled for:

Kevin MacDonald's review
http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...81#pid3381

Aside from that, Peter Frost, Meng Hu, Davide Piffer, myself and yourself reviewed it before publication. Since you were posting in this very thread back then, you should know this.

No, you have to have independent referees/reviewers (usually at least 3) that are qualified in the subject, furthermore they should not show some sort of heavy or clear bias. What you have confirmed is your journals are pseudo-journals comparable to something like the creationist journal Answers in Genesis puts out. Kev Macdonald the only referee is not qualified, his background is psychology (not biology, physical anthropology or genetics which Fuerst's paper mostly covers). Macdonald also is heavily biased, he's a leader of the neo-Nazi American Third Position political party and a well known anti-Semite fruitcake-

The university's psychology department, as well as the California State University, Long Beach academic senate, have voted to formally dissociate themselves from his work in 2008.[6][7]

The academic senate issued the following statement: "While the academic denate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B._MacDonald

Now are you going to say this is "slander"? Its common knowledge this guy is a racist anti-Semite and 99.9% people won't touch this guy work or theories with a disinfected barge-pole with good reason. His critics even include hereditarians such as Pinker who see him as nuts. This is the only guy you could get to review Fuerst?

And here learn something about genuine peer-review-
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Peer_review

[Krom]

Mikemikev "Michael C" is saying you (John Fuerst) are impersonating him at RW in an email. See the Racialism page below. On the other page I posted that conversation here. I also noted the same person had their account perm disabled on this forum too (he's been banned across the net for trolling forums and online-encyclopaedias). Mikemikev (Michael Coombs) is known to have mental issues, creates sockpuppets across the internet, but then joins forums claiming they are other people. I had to deal with this abuse from him from 2013-2014.

In his email, he linked to your email and is basically posting junk. This guy is a compulsive liar, nothing he says is true.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Racialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:.../Mikemikev
https://www.question.com/who-is-internet...82568.html
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Mikemikev

[Krom]

The quote from "Michael C" I presume is from your book:

"[Subspecies are] plants which agree in essentials almost completely with each other, and are often so similar to each other that an inexperienced person has trouble in separating them, and about which one can conjecture, not without reason, that they have formally had a common mother, notwithstanding that they now always reproduce their like from seed." (Ehrhart, 1784)--Michael C (talk) 20:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Racial...les_Darwin

It also makes no sense whatsoever to claim this is you, since the debate on that page followed two more banned sock ips of Mikemikev. So "Michael C" is definitely him.

[Chuck]

Interestingly if you read this paper, the authors complain that deme should not be a word on its own (because its an add-on, such as phenodeme, topodeme, ecodeme and others). However it was most widely used to mean gamodeme and has stuck as a local breeding population/panmictic unit.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...2350.x/pdf

I cited a more recent paper, instead:

Winsor, M. P. (2000). Species, Demes, and the Omega Taxonomy: Gilmour and The New Systematics. Biology and Philosophy, 15(3), 349-3

Ok, but you would agree that my "natural divisions" are not simply "demes between which there are genetic differences", no? (Let's just call these "genogamodemes" for now.) That is, not all natural divisions are genogamodemes, and not all genogamodemes are natural divisions. And you would agree that the same holds for "constant varieties", no? Thus I wrote:

"Generally, demes (or gamodemes) are defined in terms of the probability of sharing descendants, while races are defined in terms of shared ancestry. While the two concepts are related, as demes which are isolated to a sufficient degree for a long enough time become races (a point recognized by early race theorists), the concepts are distinct. Thus, one can not change one's race by changing one's deme (that is, by joining another breeding community). Conversely, by forming a more or less isolated breeding community one can not immediately form a race; and by dissolving the barriers to exogamy that define a deme, one can not make members of a once deme-race, not members of a race. This is a nontrivial conceptual distinction and it is one which stands at the core of the original race concept, one which attempted to explain why transplanted organisms kept their region (and often deme) of origin characteristics and yet were capable of interbreeding with organisms in the destination region (and often deme). "

For example, North and South America form two massive genogamodemes, but surely not two biogeographic ancestry groups or natural divisions. Thus, what I call race -- and what was often called race -- is not redundant with what you call deme.

So that we can move forward, can you either concur or disagree?

[Krom]

I have more evidence for my claims, this time for Buffon.

"Firstly, in many occurrences, “race” is clearly distinguished from “varieties” or “nations”. It defines a certain level of similarity and constancy in characteristics despite local variations or national traits. For instance, the different Lapps (i.e. Borandians, Zembians, Samoyeds and so on) “seem to be of the same race" despite their differences, because they share the same general physical characters (eyes, hair, faces) and the same customs. This does not mean that there are no “varieties” among them, but rather that «if these peoples differ, it is only a question of more and less» (Buffon, 1749c, pp. 371, 373). The same remark may apply to all peoples from the “Tartar race”, who may differ in various aspects but «share so many similarities that we have to consider them as being part of the same race … the essential characters of their race always remain» (pp. 379 –384). To Buffon, for instance, the Japanese, Chinese and Tartars, in spite of their notable differences, are «similar enough that we can consider them as part of the same and unique race» (p. 389). It is clear that “race” is an entity broader than nations or mere varieties, which is grounded on a community of characteristics."
- Race and Genealogy: Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of “Race”. Claude-Olivier Doron. Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2012, Vol. 22, 75-109

"Race" for Buffon (like Kant etc) never covered trivial "local varieties"/demes. Like I said Dobzhansky's idea any inter-population variation is racial down to local villages, was an absurd re-definition. Human races were shown not to exist, so Dobzhansky founded a new concept, "weak racial population naturalism" rather than traditional/strong meaning of race (which was falsified if applied to humans by the 1970s).

[Chuck]

The problem you now have is your large divisions of populations (e.g. "Europeans"), are not actual meta-populations but arbitrary spatial populations. The problem with this is they aren't then useful.

You are being evasive. I previously summarized the flow of the argument:
http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...21#pid3521 We should be on point (5).

I articulated a meaningful sense in which races, so defined, were both real and natural. So you changed the issue to one of whether the race concept and/or its application to humans was "useful". I noted that it was useful for me. And I noted that a number of others employ race or race-like concepts. I also pointed out that the "genetic population", "genetic cluster", and "biographic ancestry group" concepts as often formulated -- ones which clearly are seen as being useful by many -- are equivalent to the general race concept which I was discussing. And I noted that a number of race-critics have pointed out the same, arguing... Recognizing that if you granted that e.g., "biographic ancestry" groups are races "in a phony moustache and glasses" (Silverstein, 2015) you would have to concede the "usefulness" argument, you began to double down on your race-revisionist one. According to this, old time races were conceptualized radically different from our new time "biographic ancestry" groups or "genetic populations"...

To establish the radical difference:

1. First you argued that races, as divisions of a species, were traditionally thought of as having platonic essences. I showed that this wasn't the case.
2. Then you argued that races as such were traditionally thought of as lacking individual variation. I showed that this wasn't the case.
3. Then you argued that races as such were traditionally thought of as lacking individual variation "in situ". I again showed that this wasn't the case.
4. Then you argued that races were traditionally thought of as being deeply discontinuous. I again showed that this wasn't the case.
5. Now you wish to argue that the differences between races per se was traditionally thought of as exceeding the differences between organisms within races. I noted that this is a complex issue and that I would like to come to an agreement about (1-4) before moving on to it.

Instead, you are playing (?) dense and feigning (?) that you can not recognize the difference between spatial populations, demes, genogamodemes, and natural division races. If my race concept is not useful, then why is it so often used, just under different names e.g., "biogeographic ancestry groups", "genetic clusters", etc?

I'm not interested in Mikemikev drama, don't discuss it here.

[Krom]

"Generally, demes (or gamodemes) are defined in terms of the probability of sharing descendants, while races are defined in terms of shared ancestry. While the two concepts are related, as demes which are isolated to a sufficient degree for a long enough time become races (a point recognized by early race theorists), the concepts are distinct. Thus, one can not change one's race by changing one's deme (that is, by joining another breeding community). Conversely, by forming a more or less isolated breeding community one can not immediately form a race; and by dissolving the barriers to exogamy that define a deme, one can not make members of a once deme-race, not members of a race. This is a nontrivial conceptual distinction and it is one which stands at the core of the original race concept, one which attempted to explain why transplanted organisms kept their region (and often deme) of origin characteristics and yet were capable of interbreeding with organisms in the destination region (and often deme). "

For example, North and South America form two massive genogamodemes, but surely not two biogeographic ancestry groups or natural divisions. Thus, what I call race -- and what was often called race -- is not redundant with what you call deme.

A race/subspecies is an intergenerational deme or meta-population (group of demes) that shows a high level of genetic differentiation.

Since according to your concept race does not need a threshold of genetic differentiation, your races are just groups of demes (meta-populations) based on a high tendency of in-group mating. The ideal deme is an isolate, but this very rarely exists. The definition then is more-or-less isolated, but which allows for minimal out-group mating with adjacent demes.

The problem with your concept though is that it confuses meta-populations with spatial populations.

For example "Caucasoid", "European", "Mongoloid", "Negroid" are not meta-populations in the sense of large groups of demes, rather they are arbitrary spatial populations. They are useless to population genetics

What would be required for Caucasoid to be a massive meta-population would be sharp mating discontinuity at its boundaries -- this would simply be a geographical or social barrier.

There are no geographical barriers that mark Caucasoid like this, nor for Mongoloid.

Instead there is just a continuity of demes, with the exception of meta-populations but that are nowhere near the size of a continent.

[Chuck]

I have more evidence for my claims, this time for Buffon.

Did you just start reading my comments?

Naturally, I discussed this issue in my paper. The short version is: Early race concepts, which divided humans by genealogy/lineage, did not extend all the way down to e.g., small ethnic groups. But now we know that one can make genealogy based divisions often at the level of these. So now one faces a choice: one can set an arbitrary differentiation criteria and recognize only some genealogy based divisions as races or one could recognize all such divisions as races -- or, better, one can distinguish between a general inclusive concept and narrow concepts...The long version is: "Now, to be fair, some used the race concept to describe only certain levels of what we would call racial differentiation. As said, Blumenbach, if ambiguously, distinguished between races and nations. Similarly, Buffon considered as “races” only groups which exhibited constant enough differences (Doron, 2011); less distinct groups were often classified as nations. Thus, many of Dobzhansky’s (1946) “races” would correspond with Buffon’s “nations"..." [Read the whole section.]

http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...60#pid3560

I suppose that one could define a race as a "visibly" recognizable natural division as opposed to a genomically recognizable one. And in defense of the arbitrary requirement for "visible" recognition one could cite historic usage and the relation between the race and the constant variety concept. That would surely answer Hochman-esque critiques -- and one would still retain regional human races. I would tend to call that a "narrow race concept", though, and subsume it under a more general one, which would make room for Hartl and Clark (1997) esque races. What would Buffon have thought about this more general usage? I don't know, but it's consistent with the idea of race as lineage identified, not defined by, by differences.